Oddly enough, it's about ME...

After a long dry spell creatively (I anticipate another such period sometime soon. A "long dry spell" indeed! How inventive!), I finally worked up enough nerve to write. Thanks to the good graces of ME Magazine, and the personal initiative of Annie Nisce, I finally got published. It's a short feature article, and I can at least assure you that the article is better than this rambling, frustratingly artless post. Enjoy!

Dragons are too Seldom Here
By John-D Borra
Published in ME Magazine, October 2005 issue

I am a voracious reader, which makes sense since I am currently employed as a literature teacher in one of the top liberal arts institutions in Metro Manila. One time, after digesting (and thoroughly enjoying) Ogden Nash’s poem “Dragons Are Too Seldom Here”, a young lady whose fashion sense bordered on the surreal asked me what I thought of her current ensemble, which looked as if it had been spewed from some Anne Klein fall catalog for the aesthetically challenged. I manfully struggled to stifle my initial reaction and tried to offer her some kind words to celebrate her independent attitude towards fashion.

“Well, what do you think?” she prodded.
“In my humble opinion, your look is very Ogden Nash. After all, ‘where there’s a dragon, there’s a miracle’.”

I meant to say that I appreciated her absolute fearlessness in choosing color, cut and style. I meant to applaud her refusal to bow down to the inexorable march of the “fashion trend of the moment”. I meant to say that the unconventional and the odd could, in the blink of an eye, be an opportunity for grace and beauty.

I am a fool. And despite enjoying several years of wedded bliss, I know next to nothing about women.

Now that I have recovered sufficiently from that experience, I would like to help other women, if not accept, then certainly understand how otherwise kind-hearted, educated males such as myself can be thoroughly unmanned by issues that all women seem to know by instinct.

FAT

The five most dreaded words in the English language, at least for males who entertain the ambition of not going through life alone, are contained in the following question: “Honey, do I look fat?” Honestly, men have no idea how to respond to that honey-toned mantrap of a question. It’s a lose-lose scenario. If we say that you could stand to lose some fat at the hips, you automatically flash that hurt expression that people normally associate with babies whose candies were confiscated by the mean boy down the block. If we say that you look fine, you immediately retort, “You’re not even paying attention! I’m serious!”

Well dear, so are we. And since this is a case where silence can truly be considered golden, we meekly tiptoe around the subject or divert your attention with “Wow, I really enjoyed that show on the Lifestyle Channel. I had no idea that there were so many different ways to make an apartment look bigger!”


SHOPPING

Another occasion that never fails to send chills spindling down men’s spines is shopping. Men do shop, and we do spend either roughly the same amount of money or more on our caprichos, but we cannot understand how women can spend so much time and energy just to discover the perfect baby-tee at the bottom of some bin that previously held what smells like the remains of a pack of terrier pups. Whenever I find myself accompanying my sisters to the suspiciously timed annual three day sales of the local malls, or surreptitiously navigating alleys that I would never venture into without updating my immunizations or sans a battalion of Scout Rangers, several questions whir through my brain:

“How do you know that it’s the perfect baby-tee?”

“What are the dimensions of perfection? Should it fit snugly, or should there be allowances for certain body parts to move about freely? What pantone does the perfect blue/pink/yellow/orange baby-tee come from?”

“How do I get out of this mess?”


SIGNALS

Subtlety. It escapes us. Despite the fact that you probably think that you have dropped enough clues to indicate your mood or your displeasure, take it from me: we didn’t get a single one. I once read that the significant, fundamental differences between men and women originate in the differences between male and female brains. Men, supposedly, are more inclined to the speculative pursuits. Women, on the other hand, due to their more highly developed corpus callosum (that which integrates the left and right hemisphere of the brain), are naturally more gifted at managing minutiae. What does this mean in practical terms? Simply put, men are not genetically disposed to pick up on the many different hints that women drop. This is not because we don’t care. We just didn’t think there was something to care about to begin with.

This is by no means a comprehensive listing of what men find puzzling about women, nor is this an attempt to facetiously explain away our difficulties without admitting to some culpability. This is more like an apology. You do matter, and whatever you are concerned about is important enough for us males to be concerned about also. At times, in the course of trying to make relationships work, we try to take the only bit of advice that sticks to our minds (mainly because this advice oftentimes comes from the first women we ever loved, our mothers): be genuine in dealing with the people you love. After all, it is in the act of loving that one is most genuine. Pardon our shortcomings. Let’s go out and find that perfect baby-tee.